TITLE:
DNA Barcoding and Identification of Medicinal Plants in the Kingdom of Bahrain
AUTHORS:
Malabika Roy Pathak, Abdulaziz A. M. Mohamed, Muhammad Farooq
KEYWORDS:
DNA Barcode, Medicinal Plants, Phylogenetic Tree, Species Identification
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.9 No.13,
December
26,
2018
ABSTRACT: Authentication of
medicinally important plants is essential
for increasingly demands of herbal remedies worldwide. DNA barcoding technology
is currently gaining importance as a reliable tool for plant species identification,
although one barcode gene is not enough in the exceptions. Short sequence
diversity of standardized specific coding gene regions of rbcLa and matK of
plastid genome together with noncoding ribosomal internal transcribed spacer 2
(ITS2) marker is used as
barcode to compare and differentiate plant species. The success of obtaining
sequences of the 29 analyzed plants distributed in 21 families using three
different barcode genes rbcLa, matK and ITS2 were 97%, 79% and 75% respectively.
Multiple sequence alignment confirmed the medicinal plants at species level by
89.28%, 86.32% and 60.86% obtained through rbcLa, ITS2 and matK barcodes sequences respectively. The genetic
distance between sequence pairs (GD) and percentage identity (PI) is compared to analyze the plant identity at species
level. The phylogenic trees constructed to show the relatedness and distance of
the analyzed plants in the history of evolution by the analysis of richness of
clades. The construction of DNA barcode library of desert medicinal plants is
an introductory research arena in Kingdom of Bahrain in helping the routine
identification of plants, and developing
guidelines for detection of adulterants in herbal medicines as well as protection
of biodiversity.